The Point Holder
In AT-43 you spend most of your time taking and holding points. getting RP are essential to getting your reinforcements on the board and VP are essential to winning. Enter the point holding unit. Its job is to get to an exposed VP point as fast as possible and hold onto it for dear life. Every faction can field such a unit and it is essential to have one in your force.
These guys take indirect fire weapons so they don’t all have to be exposed to enemy fire, and can help slow the enemy’s advance. They also should have a large number of troops as they will be holding onto those VP points that will be highly contested and WILL take some nasty indirect fire in an attempt to dislodge them.
Examples of point holders are:
- UNA: 12 Star troopers with flamers and medics
- Therians: Grim golems with flamers
- Red Blok: Krasnye Soldaty with grenade launchers and medics (Captain Vrachov optional)
- Karmans: Anakongas with flamers (Guru Lucius optional) or Wendigos with grenade launchers (Lucius optional)
These units will be extremely tough to dislodge either due to large numbers and/or stealth and will also be very difficult to advance on due to their indirect weapons. The Point holder will need to be backed up with an anti AFV unit as these pose the greatest threat to dislodging them.
The point holder is a key role in any AT-43 army, sure lists that let AFV’s control points are great for grabbing RP points quickly, but when it comes to holding onto a fiercely conteded point, nothing beats the combo of a large unit with medics/stealth and indirect weapons.
How about multiple, smaller point holders which can gobble up more key locations?
For example, in Landing, we find we need more, smaller units in order to cover all the objectives. Yes they are elimated more quickly, but then again you get more activations too.
Landing is a bit of an interesting scenario as the attacker isn’t trying to compete for VP point positions. In this situation you’ll want to be able to take out infantry units primarily as getting AFV’s off the table does not generate enough VP for the attacker to win. As the attacker a few smaller units is definitely the way to go as you get to increase the number of medics / overseers with reconstruction available to you and improve the chances a unit will make it off the battlefield. As the defender you want to be able to ground units to buy you time to generate VP. So smaller point holder units would be good but you only have 1 special weapon. A full sized point holder cover 2 of the side VP points. A unit with 2/3 flamers will make any small unit think twice about trying to advance through them. I’d say give it a go and see which might work out best for you.